Buttercupchappati Chronicles

Feed the birds, the bees, the possums, and ...

Whoever is passing through really.

There are quite a lot of food plants on our half acre block, at least seven fruit trees, not counting the self sown plums, the horse chestnut, the various herbs and vegetables and the odd grasses here and there. (To be honest, only the cockatoos eat the chestnuts, and only in years where there is not much other food about.)

We don't actually get much of it.

I don't mind really, it's nice trade off to have the wild things come into your own garden. And the noise of the possum fights when the plums and the crab apples are ripe, are both terrifying and hilarious. Plus they have Olympic running events across our corrugated roof, wearing hobnail boots.

But I am feeling a bit cranky about the olive tree!

It was planted around 1998 I think, was growing slowly but steadily, until a bit of a setback. All the wood for building an extension on the house was delivered on top of it...

It did survive, olives are the survivors of the tree world! But then its timing was all wrong once it started to produce fruit, it was always fruiting at the wrong time of year. So that took a few years to re-set.

Now we actually get reasonable amounts, which the birds enjoy immensely.

Looking forward to a dish of home grown kalamatta olives one day, if I can only keep the Rosella's out! Heading off to the produce store for some netting, sorry guys, its my turn for the olives. Wonder if they also have an old Greek Grandmother who can teach me how to cure them properly?

 

Bath therapy coming up

so I am out in the chilly Woodend spring, a-gathering of rhododendron flowers.

Next year when Dr Nida is teaching us Ku Nye level 2 we will be studying Lum or Bath therapy. It's a very effective external therapy component of Tibetan medicine. In Xining where I go to study, the Tibetan Medicine hospital has a whole Lum centre. People come and stay for a week and have these medicinal baths twice a day, and often some other type of external therapy as well, such or Ku Nye (massage). It is important that the patients environment is controlled for the week, so it is a residential treatment. You mustn't get too cold, move around too much, things like that. I am hoping to try it out next year.

Anyway, we need five herbs to make the basic Lum mixture and one if those is the Rhododendron. My tree is just covered in these gorgeous pink blooms and as we won't have another flowering before April I am collecting and drying. How organised is that, sometimes I just frighten myself.

The pink is certainly full on, it will be like a Barbie bath I'm thinking! Pics here:

http://buttercupchappati.typepad.com/photos/petal_power/

Liriodendron tulipifera

Tuliptree to the rest of us. 

So called I am guessing because the leaves look like a tulip flower in profile.

We have a large specimen in our back yard, it would be about 30 years old 

I think, and is planted way too close to the house! It drives me nuts. 

It drops branches in the slightest breath of wind. Much like the the silver birch, it drops stuff in three out of the four seasons of the year. The leaves blow in the back door in vast clouds every time the door is open. They fill the roof gutters with abandon.  

The seed pods are sharp and hard, leaving deep grooves in our polished wood floors when tracked in on shoes, and are murder on an unsuspecting bare foot.

It also very beautiful. In spring and summer it spreads a delicious lime green canopy of gentle shade and the passionfruit-like flowers are subtly fragrant. The birds love it and it is a well travelled bypass from roof to roof for the possums. 

And at this time of year it is a glorious gold like it has stored up all the summer sun for this last glimpse of warmth and colour. Against a clear blue autumn sky it makes you glad to live in a cold climate where we really get to live out the seasons. So I forgive it for being annoying and send a grateful thought to whoever planted it so long ago.